Everything You Need to Know to Source Candidates on Google+

Editor’s note: This post is part of our Source the Web series here on SourceCon. It features articles on how to mine particular online data resources from experts like Glen Cathey.

Do you want to know how to search for people on Google+ by title/skill, company, AND location?

If so, you’ve come to the right place – I’m going to show you 3 different ways to find people on Google+, and only one of them allows you to reliably search for and find people based on where they live:

In fact, Google+ is now actually the #2 most actively used service online:

Google+ Native Search Functionality

While the massive change in users and activity has been great, one thing that unfortunately hasn’t changed is that Google+ still doesn’t have any built-in functionality to reliably search for people by specific location, which is critical to any sourcing and recruiting effort.

What you can do, however, is search for people who work at specific companies using the “Find coworkers” search functionality and entering in any company.

Searching Google+ via Find Coworkers

For example, searching for “coworkers” at Rio Tinto (world leader in mining and processing):

Here are some of the results – all currently employed at the target company:

What you can’t do with this search functionality is search by people who work at specific companies in specific locations. which is critical to most sourcing and recruiting efforts.

However, if you’re new to Google+, you should be impressed by your ability to find anyone.

In this respect, Google+ is similar to Facebook’s Graph Search and unlike LinkedIn, as you don’t have to be connected to people or have them in Circles to find them and view their profiles, which is fantastic for sourcers and recruiters.

Searching Google+ via the Google+ Search Bar

Moving on to Google+’s search bar, you can try to find people in a specific location by simply typing in a city along with the rest of your query. For example, take a look at the results for a simple search such as “software engineer” “new york” “google”

Pretty decent results, right?

Don’t be fooled by appearances.

You can see from just that screenshot that not all of those people work at Google (although many do), and if you explore the results individually, you’ll find that they all mention “New York” somewhere (as they should, based on my search criteria) – but they don’t all live in New York.

For example, taking a closer look at one of the results:

You can see she attended school in New York, but her location isn’t revealed on her Google+ profile as it is for others.

Cross referencing her on LinkedIn shows she lives in California.

I’m not slamming Google+’s search bar – it does a decent job, but it doesn’t offer sourcers and recruiters the search precision they need.

Unfortunately, according to their own website, FindPeopleonPlus has only indexed 45M users, which is now obviously a small portion of the total population of Google+ users.

The above search found 109 people, which isn’t too shabby. However, I’ll show you how to use Google to X-Ray search Google+ to find more people in a moment.

FindPeopleonPlus does have some great functionality – you can search for/sort people by gender (diversity sourcing!), education (specific university), employer, occupation, state, and city.

Interestingly, it appears they are busy building a “Career Platform” – I’m assuming this won’t be free because what they’ve already built can easily be used by recruiters to find candidates.

Hopefully they will speed up their performance – I noticed my searches lagged significantly. But maybe I’m just spoiled.

Oh, and I just had to share these two nuggets of gold I found when exploring FindPeopleonPlus for this post:

Matt’s got a sense of humor. Maybe Kelly can add the ability to search Google+ for people by employer, occupation and location like FindPeopleonPlus can.

Am I the only one that is confused and disappointed by the fact that the Google team hasn’t thought to offer a greater degree of search capability? Even Facebook’s Graph Search offers the ability to search by location, current and past employer, current title, etc.

I thought Google = search?

How to Find People on Google+ by Location: X-Ray Search

To this day, using Google to search Google+ remains the best way to reliably find people on Google+ by location.

“Places Lived” doesn’t exist anymore – it’s now just “Places,” and the word “lived” is no longer there to search for exactly as I did in the past.

However, location information from Google+ profiles is now often also displayed in the summary info at the top of a person’s profile, and it can be listed as “Lived in ________” or “Lives in _________” – you can search for either or both.

X-Ray Searching Google+ for “Lived in”

Here is an example of a Google X-Ray search of Google+ to find software engineers who work at Google in New York, using “lived in _______:”

One thing you can do using Google to X-Ray search Google+ for profiles that you can’t do on FindPeopleonPlus is Boolean search with no limitations.

For the Boolean bashers (I know you’re out there!), basic Boolean logic allows the ability to search for multiple titles, skills, and or companies in a single search string. Although FindPeopleonPlus does support basic Boolean logic for keywords, they don’t allow the use of Boolean logic to simultaneously search for any of a number of employers or occupations/titles.

With a search interface similar to FindPeopleonPlus’s, you’re limited to one company, title, etc. at a time per search. Yes – it still “works,” but it feels like wearing mittens vs. fingerless gloves when you know how to get exactly what you want and you can’t get exactly what you want in a single search like you can with Google.

For example, we can search for any of 3 titles at once using Google to X-Ray search Google+:

There are many other interesting things you can do with Google+ X-Ray searches – I just wanted to provide you with a few “starter” searches to get you going.

Google+ Got Your Attention Now?

There’s no doubt that LinkedIn is “where it’s at” with regard to deep and highly searchable human capital data, and I don’t think LinkedIn is becoming “saturated” as many people seem to be suggesting recently – most sourcers/recruiters only find and review 20-30% of what’s available to be found on LinkedIn, leaving at least 50M (if not 100M+!) profiles unfound/unviewed. No, I am not exaggerating for effect.

Even with sourcers and recruiters only scratching the surface of LinkedIn, Google+ cannot be ignored.

Google+ now has more profiles than LinkedIn and is the most active social network in the world second only to Facebook. Yes, I know – Google+ haters/doubters like to argue about what “active” really means…who cares?!?! Most Google+ naysayers haven’t spent 5 minutes on Google+.

Get on Google+ and do some searches and I think you’ll be impressed with what you can quickly and easily find. Explore Google+ a little bit (actually USE it for a few weeks) and I think you’ll be surprised by the functionality and the many benefits and advantages if can afford sourcers and recruiters.

Check out the kind of information you’re missing if you’re not searching Google+:

Yes, that’s an email address I blurred out. It’s there for anyone to find – it’s not listed because I know them or have them in a Circle – because I don’t.

Unlike LinkedIn, I’ve found that software engineers and other non-recruiting professionals do include email addresses and sometimes even phone numbers on their profiles that anyone can see – like the phone number of this UX Engineer at Microsoft:

Of course, there are many advantages of using Google+ in your sourcing and recruiting efforts that are beyond the scope of this post.

As for me – I don’t care if you never use Google+ for sourcing and recruiting. It just means I have less competition.

Glen leverages process and technology to identify and hire more of the right people more quickly. He loves to work on solutions that are powered by workforce/data science, big data, and predictive/prescriptive analytics on a global scale, as he firmly believes they will power the “Moneyball Recruiting” effect, empowering companies with a true competitive advantage.
Glen has served as the thought leader for sourcing/social/recruiting strategies, technologies, and processes for firms with over 70,000 hires annually; plus played a key role in ATS/CRM and resume parsing/search/matching solution implementation and customization. He has hired, trained, developed, and managed large local, national, and centralized sourcing and recruiting teams, including a National Recruiting Center that now has over 300 associates.
When not working a recruiting desk, he has recruited, trained, and managed highly productive teams of up to 24 recruiters responsible for 700 – 900 hires per year. In his current role, he trains hundreds of information technology, finance and accounting, clinical research, and health information management recruiters nationally who are responsible for over 10,000 hires annually.
He is extremely passionate about leveraging technology (applicant tracking systems, social networks, job board resume databases, and the Internet) for talent identification and acquisition and is considered a thought leader in Boolean and semantic search techniques.
In his personal time, he is the author of www.booleanblackbelt.com where he shares his thoughts and theories.

Nice Glen. This made me want to take the Liam Neeson meme and say, “I don’t know who you, but I will hire Glen Cathey to hunt you down and find you.” I’m always both amazed and appreciative of your generosity to the recruiting community. Donna

http://www.booleanblackbelt.com Glen Cathey

Thank you very much Donna!

Mr Jim Cason Fortner

I like the article Glen, but with recent revelations about Google giving access to the NSA, I’ll stick with just Google (or a one that does no tracking…they exist!) No, I am not looking for anything I shouldn’t, it’s a principle issue. Besides, if you know how to master the specific Boolean language for Google, the “people find” on Google+ pales in comparison…but again, thanks for the info

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